Rep. Cantor's 'Compromised' Reasoning

July 25, 2011 5:50 pm ET —
Matt Finkelstein

Earlier today, the White House put
its weight behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) proposal to
cut the deficit by $2.7 trillion, without any additional tax revenues, and
increase the debt ceiling through 2012. Reid's surprising
proposal satisfies the GOP's stated demands, but House Republicans appear
ready to ignore it and move forward anyway with a short-term plan that
Democrats oppose.

At a press conference this afternoon, House Speaker John
Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) emphasized that Boehner's
new short-term proposal is not Cut, Cap, and Balance, which was evidently
supposed to prove that Republicans are compromising. In Cantor's self-congratulatory words, the
GOP's latest gambit is "a well thought-out and reasoned plan in which no side
gets all that they want."

CANTOR: The plan that we just introduced to our members is a well thought-out and reasoned plan in
which no side gets all that they want. We put out our plan as to what it is we
want, the Cut, Cap and Balance plan, last week. This plan is not
that. You know, the president said that he wants higher taxes and he wants a
vote through the election. This plan doesn't have that in it. So, it is a situation
where no side gets all that they want. This is a responsible plan that
addresses the urgency of trying to make sure that we avoid default, which I
know that we will, but then it sets in motion a process for real cuts so that
we can live up to our obligation to the people that sent us here.

For his part,
Cantor continues to struggle mightily with the concept of
compromise. Republicans still have not made any concessions to Democrats that
conflict with GOP priorities; they've merely scaled back their offer from all of what conservatives want to most of what conservatives want. As
Steve Benen puts
it, there is "no
comparison between Democratic
offers to meet the GOP more than half-way, and a Republican offer to give
themselves everything they want."

Finally, it's worth
pointing out that Cantor would not accept his own reasoning if the parties were
reversed. Neither the Recovery Act nor the Affordable Care Act, in their final
forms, represented President Obama's first
choice. But you don't see Cantor hailing the health care bill as a
bipartisan achievement because Democrats who sacrificed the public option did
not get "all that they want."